Child Labour Conference in Arkhangelsk

A stand with photographs of local children begging in the street, washing cars and carrying heavy loads while picking potatoes welcomed the participants of a two-day conference on the elimination of child labour that took place in Arkhangelsk on June 2-3. This first impression was followed by a number of presentations and lively discussions around the issue. The conference took place on the initiative of the Mayor’s Office of Arkhangelsk who requested the Subregional Office to provide an international perspective on the problem. Pauline Barrett-Reid, the Director of the Office and Alexei Boukharov, IPEC National Coordinator were joined by Svetlana Egorycheva, the Deputy Director of a Saint Petersburg non-governmental organization Child Protection and Elena Khoroshkina, Head of the Northern Council of Ministers Office in Arkhangelsk. The purpose was to raise awareness among the social partners, militia workers, representatives of the Prosecutor’s Office and various NGOs who took part in the event. They shared their knowledge of legislative measures and practical ways to start dealing with this complex issue as well as the experiences of a very successful IPEC project that takes place in Saint Petersburg and the Leningrad region.

The conference raised a number of questions arising from the ILO intervention: starting from sensitization of public awareness of minimum international standards to the training of social workers.

The tripartite participants were unanimous that the seminar was an “eyes-opener” to them as sometimes even professional social workers cannot tell the difference between the idea of child labour and youth employment. But the distinction is clearly defined by the ILO Conventions “Child labour refers to work that is mentally, physically, socially or morally dangerous and harmful to children and interferes with their education”.

The second day of the conference took place at the Centre for Social Rehabilitation of Minors. It started with a detailed presentation of the centre’s activities and followed by a more “down-to-earth” discussion on methods of social wok with children prone to labour exploitation.

The participants of the seminar formed five working groups to analyze and amend a draft Initial Plan of Action against Child Labour in the city that included the issues of public awareness raising, legislation, its enforcement, education and support for the children and their families. The participants’ contributions will be included in the final version of the document to be signed by the tripartite constituents of the city. The Mayor’s Office put forward the initiative to establish a tripartite commission to monitor the work in this field.

Arkhangelsk specialists admitted that there is a lack of sound statistical data and they can only very approximately use the existing data when talking about the child labour issue in the city. The participants agreed that the work on elimination of child labour should start with a gender-segregated piece of research into the forms of child labour in Arkhangelsk and its region, including a thorough analysis of the existing legislation and looked forward to future collaboration between ILO and the social partners of Arkhangelsk.

The seminar was ended with the showing of a Swedish feature film Lilja Forever on child trafficking and prostitution.